CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Bologna it runs 297 km to Bologna; allow about 5 h 32 of riding. The stops in between: Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola, Villa de Cafaggiolo, Historic Centre of Florence and back through Villa de Cafaggiolo. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 29 km this is Chiantigiana Wine Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Baraccano is not a village, it is a corner of Bologna: a gate in the old thirteenth-century walls where the Via Santo Stefano runs out of the centre. The name comes from the barbican that once defended it. Next to the gate stands the small sanctuary of the Madonna del Baraccano, a Renaissance church whose fresco of the Virgin drew pilgrims after a reported miracle, and beside it a lovely little courtyard, a place most visitors walk straight past on the way to the Two Towers.
Read the complete Baraccano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Baraccano is where the day begins. Next is Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola, 41 km on.
The Santerno valley climbs south from Imola into the Apennines toward Tuscany, and about fifteen kilometres up, the river cuts through a ridge of shining grey-white rock. This is the western end of the Vena del Gesso Romagnola, the gypsum vein that runs across this part of Romagna, and Monte Penzola rises above the village of Borgo Tossignano, with Fontanelice and Casalfiumanese nearby.
Read the complete Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola comes up 41 km in. Next is Villa de Cafaggiolo.
In the green bowl of the Mugello, north of Florence, the Medici family kept a house long before they ruled the city. Cafaggiolo was an old family property, and around the middle of the fifteenth century Cosimo the Elder had the architect Michelozzo transform it into a fortified country villa, with battlements, a tower and a moat, a cross between a castle and a farmhouse. Lorenzo the Magnificent spent time here as a boy, and the villa became a favourite retreat for hunting and escaping the plague in the city. It is one of the Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany listed by UNESCO, and visits depend on current restoration and opening arrangements, so check before you arrive.
Read the complete Villa de Cafaggiolo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
83 km in you reach Villa de Cafaggiolo. Next is Historic Centre of Florence.
Florence is the kind of city where the problem is not finding something to look at but deciding when to stop. The historic centre sits on a bend of the Arno, a compact grid of Roman origin with the Duomo at its middle, Brunelleschi's dome rising over the roofs, the Palazzo Vecchio at the civic heart and the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge the retreating Germans spared in 1944. The Medici bankers who ran the place for much of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries paid for most of what you are about to see, and they were rather good at it.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Florence write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Florence, about halfway. Next is back through Villa de Cafaggiolo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa de Cafaggiolo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa de Cafaggiolo sits at 165 km, about halfway. Next is back through Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola, 42 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola comes up 207 km in. Next is Baraccano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Baraccano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Baraccano closes the day.
Baraccano → Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola → Villa de Cafaggiolo is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa de Cafaggiolo → Historic Centre of Florence is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Florence → back through Villa de Cafaggiolo is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa de Cafaggiolo → back through Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Penzola → Baraccano is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.